DeMarcus Hicks, a recent graduate of nursing school who is working as a contractor with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, gives a person a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine booster shot in in Federal Way, Wash., on Dec. 20.Ted S. Warren/The Associated Press
The head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday that he’s worried about the Omicron and Delta variants of COVID-19 producing a “tsunami” of cases between them, but he’s still hopeful that the world will put the worst of the pandemic behind it in 2022.
Two years after the coronavirus first emerged, top officials with the UN health agency cautioned that it’s still too early to be reassured by initial data suggesting that Omicron, the latest variant, leads to milder disease. First reported last month in southern Africa, it is already the dominant variant in the United States and parts of Europe.
And after 92 of the WHO’s 194 member countries missed a target to vaccinate 40 per cent of their populations by the end of this year, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged everyone to make a “new year’s resolution” to get behind a campaign to vaccinate 70 per cent of countries’ populations by the beginning of July.
According to WHO’s figures, the number of COVID-19 cases recorded worldwide increased by 11 per cent last week compared with the previous week, with nearly 4.99 million newly reported from Dec. 20 to 26. New cases in Europe – which accounted for more than half of the total – were up 3 per cent while those in the Americas rose 39 per cent and there was a 7-per-cent increase in Africa. The global gain followed a gradual increase since October.
“I’m highly concerned that Omicron, being more transmissible [and] circulating at the same time as Delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases,” Dr. Tedros said at an online news conference. That, he said, will put “immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse.”
WHO said in its weekly epidemiological report that the “overall risk” related to Omicron “remains very high.” It cited “consistent evidence” that it has a growth advantage over the Delta variant.
It noted that a decline in case incidence has been seen in South Africa, and that early data from that country, Britain and Denmark suggest a reduced risk of hospitalization with Omicron, but said that more data is needed.
Dr. Tedros renewed long-standing warnings that “ending health inequity remains the key to ending the pandemic.” He said that missing the target of getting 40 per cent of populations vaccinated this year “is not only a moral shame – it cost lives and provided the virus with opportunities to circulate unchecked and mutate.”
Countries largely missed the target because of limited supply to low-income nations for most of the year and then vaccines arriving close to their expiry date, without things such as syringes, he said.
All the same, “I still remain optimistic that this can be the year we can not only end the acute stage of the pandemic, but we also chart a path to stronger health security,” Dr. Tedros said.
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